“It’s Thea Connor. I need you to come to my house and get me. I’m in danger and I need your help.”
* * *
Harry Lennox put his mobile back in his jacket pocket. “That was a cry for help from Thea Connor. She wants us to pick her up, reckons she’s in danger. Any ideas?”
“We suspected she knew a lot more about Dean and what he was up to than she was letting on, that has to be at the bottom of it,” Jess said.
“I hope she hasn’t attracted the killer’s attention and he gets to her before us — that’s all we need,” Harry said.
“What d’you intend to do?” Jess asked.
He shrugged. “Bring her in.”
It took only ten minutes to reach the semi where Thea lived with her dad. Harry could see her watching for them from an upstairs window. “Stay in the car, Jess, and keep your eyes peeled. I’ll go and get her.”
By the time he reached the front door, Thea was waiting behind it with her stuff. “Thanks. I wasn’t sure you’d come. I’ve been a stupid fool,” she said, picking up her bag. “I didn’t think I’d feel so scared, but I am, I’m bloody terrified. That lunatic wants to kill me.”
“Calm down,” he said. “Whatever it is, we’ll sort it.” Harry escorted her to the car and sat in the back with her. “Let’s go, Jess. What’s in the bag, Thea?”
Thea opened it up and took out the laptop. “Sorry, I know you’ve been looking for this, but Dean gave it to me for safe-keeping. And there’s this too.” She showed him the mobile. “He nicked it from the boss’s office at the Commodore.”
Harry held onto the laptop and dropped the phone into an evidence bag. Was this where Dean had got his information from? Could it be one of Calvert’s burner phones? He held the bag up. “We know the laptop might prove helpful, but where does this figure?”
“It’s how Dean’s boss sometimes contacted the killer.”
If she was right, this could be the breakthrough they needed. Besides the calls, it was possible they’d find Calvert’s prints on it.
“I don’t know what’s on the mobile,” she said. “I never turned it on in case it was traced. But Dean reckoned it was important.”
“This boss, d’you mean Ricky Calvert?” Harry said.
“Yes, that’s what Dean said. Calvert owns the Calvert hotel group, which includes the Commodore and the Metropole in Ryebridge. Dean worked at the Commodore in Manchester which is where Calvert has his main office.”
“Why help us now, Thea? When you were questioned before, you said you knew nothing about the laptop, and you didn’t attach much credibility to Dean’s findings either. Why so scared now?”
“I met the killer,” she said softly.
Her admission shocked Harry. What was the girl playing at? That’s exactly what Dean had done, and she knew perfectly well what had happened to him. “Where?”
“In the mall, yesterday. All along, Dean had planned to blackmail him, so I thought I’d take over where he left off. The killer would pay me and in exchange he’d get the laptop and the phone, and I wouldn’t tell you lot what I know.”
“And what do you know?” Harry said.
“That the entire operation is carried out in secrecy, mostly online. Calvert uses the code name ‘Songbird’ when he contacts the assassin about a kill.”
Jesus. Dean really had been busy. “Does the killer know the person who hires him?”
“Yes, but they’ve never met. For obvious reasons they keep their distance from each other.”
“Makes sense,” Harry said. “The man who hires him is ensuring his own safety too. He doesn’t want to end up a victim.”
“Nor does the killer. Dean reckoned Calvert won’t let him live once he’s finished with him. Thinks he’ll hire someone else and the current killer will become his first victim. I thought that would give me an edge, something for him to think about. I was wrong. Now I’ve seen him, I know he’ll just take what I’ve got and kill me anyway.” Thea started to cry. “I can’t believe I actually met him. He had a knife, he had it pressed into my side the entire time. But he seemed so ordinary, he even had a dog with him. You’d never suspect he was a killer.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“I want Sasha Steele to process these straight away,” Harry said to Col. “Take them to the Reid and don’t hand them over to anyone but her.”
“Thea Connor took some risk. Fancy meeting a killer who you know murdered your friend and then having the cheek to ask him for money.” Jess snorted. “Is the girl mad?”
“She got greedy and completely underestimated the risks,” Harry said. “Her and Dean seem to have treated this like some sort of game.”
“Given what Calvert was hiring the killer to do, would he be so careless as to leave a used burner phone in his desk drawer? Seems a bit far-fetched to me. This man is a seasoned villain who runs an empire, that’s not how I’d expect him to behave.”
“Perhaps he thought he was safe. He’s the boss, it was his office. He has a reputation as a hard man, so who would dare steal from him? Besides, who would know what those phones were for? He considered himself untouchable, Jessie, and that was his mistake.”
“D’you think Thea will be honest with us?” Jess asked.
“I don’t think she has any choice now. The girl’s terrified. We’ll interview her, then find her a safe house until this is over.”
“What about Weeks?” Jess asked.
“What about him? This is our call. Thea is our witness. We’ll tell Weeks what we’ve got when we’ve worked out how to use Thea’s statement and seen what the mobile and the missing laptop give us.”
* * *
Thea Connor was waiting in an interview room with a woman officer. She gave Harry and Jess a half-hearted smile. “I owe you an apology,” she said. “I’ve been a fool, I know.”
“You’re here now, Thea, and that’s all that matters,” Harry said. “D’you want a solicitor? Perhaps you’d like your dad to be with you.”
“Huh. My dad, the solicitor who doesn’t give a damn.” She looked down. “I asked him for help earlier and he made some excuse about work. I’d told him I was in trouble.”
“Perhaps he didn’t understand what was wrong, or how really scared you were,” Jess said.
“Wouldn’t matter if he did. Work comes first with him, it always has.”
“I can ring him if you wish,” Harry offered. “If I explain the situation, I’m sure he’ll want to be here with you.”
Thea had tears in her eyes. She nodded and took a hankie from her pocket. “Tell him I need him here — and not to be angry.”
Harry left the room to make the call, leaving Jess to deal with the tearful girl.
* * *
“It must be hard for your dad,” Jess said. “I believe there’s just the pair of you, isn’t there? Not easy, particularly when your dad is running a business.”
“Don’t make excuses for him,” Thea retorted. “He doesn’t deserve it. I hate him for letting me down this morning. I don’t ask for much, but the one time I really need him to be there for me, he refuses. He puts his bloody clients first.” She looked down. “That’s why me and Dean got on, we had a lot in common.”
The comment surprised Jess. “His mum gave me the impression that he was the light of her life.”
“Sometimes. When it suited her. That woman is a nervous wreck. She’s always ill. Some days she doesn’t even get out of bed. Dean practically looked after himself. She never bothered much about where he was or if he stayed out late.”
“He was eighteen,” Jess reminded her.
“Even so, being a parent doesn’t just stop when you come of age.”
Jess nodded. The girl was right. Two teenagers, given all the freedom they want. So what happens? They concoct wild theories and get themselves into a shed load of trouble.
“You should have spoken to us before, Thea.”
She sniffed. “I know, don’t go on. But I thought I could handle it.”
* * *
Harry returned with a mug of coffee and biscuits for Thea. “Your dad is on his way. He did sound worried when I explained what this was about.”
“Thanks.” She gave him a smile, and then said to Jess, “You’re right. If I’d come to you before, perhaps Dean wouldn’t have died.”
“You knew what he was doing?” Harry asked.
“Yes. I was waiting for him to ring me that night. He said he would, and he’d tell me how it went.”
“And when he didn’t?”
Thea shrugged. “I fell asleep. I never for a minute thought that Dean would come to any harm. It all seemed so cut and dried.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Thea’s dad, Rob Connor, arrived within ten minutes of Harry’s phone call.
As soon as he walked in, he started to berate his daughter. “For heaven’s sake, Thea, why didn’t you tell me what was going on? You should have made it clear this morning how serious this is.”
“I thought I had,” she said. “But you’d already made up your mind that it wasn’t important.”
But Harry saw the look on the man’s face. Thea’s dad wasn’t angry, he was worried. His daughter had got herself in too deep this time — people were dead, one of them a good friend of hers. He sat down and looked at Harry.
“How did Dean first become aware of what was going on, that there was a killer at work?” Harry began.
“It began when he argued with Ricky Calvert,” Thea said.
“What about, d’you know?”
“Work hours. They had Dean down to work a run of six weekends on the trot. He objected, and since Calvert was in that day, Dean took his complaint to the top. Calvert just laughed, said if he wanted the job he’d do as he was told. This made Dean angry. When he saw me later, he said no one could legally make all the money Calvert did. I think he was jealous. Calvert had come to work in a fancy sports car and had been showing round a brochure for a house he was about to buy. Dean had made some sarky comment, and Calvert called him a stupid kid. I think that’s what finally did it. A couple of weeks after the argument, Calvert went off to his villa in Greece, so Dean took the opportunity to poke around. He was convinced Calvert was up to no good. He began by hacking into the computer on his desk. It’s a standalone, not connected to the hotel system. Dean read Calvert’s emails and other stuff.”
“What about security? Didn’t anybody pick up on what he was doing?” Jess asked.
“No. No one else ever went near Calvert’s desk. Even if anyone had noticed Dean, they wouldn’t have thought anything of it. If there was ever any problem with the hotel system, they called on Dean. He was brilliant with IT, there wasn’t much he couldn’t fix.”
“Did he find anything?” Harry asked.
“He copied a load of emails and Calvert’s browser history. They’re on the laptop I gave you.”
“And the mobile phone?”
“Dean said there were about a dozen of them in Calvert’s drawer. He reckoned they were burner phones — they’re all old models. Proof, he said, that Calvert was up to his neck in some scam or other. Dean suspected drugs. He said there were so many phones that one wouldn’t be missed. He looked at them all and chose the most recently used one.”
“Why did Dean suspect Calvert was into drugs? Had he seen something?”
Thea looked away, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”
Her voice wavered. Harry suspected she was lying.
“The faces and names on Dean’s bedroom wall, where did they come from?”
“The mobiles weren’t much use on that score, all that one gives you is a number Calvert called regularly. Dean reckoned it was the killer’s.”
Harry realised what the lad had done. “Dean rang him, made himself known.”
“Yes. By then Dean had worked out what was going on.”
“And he was after money?” Harry asked.
“Yes, but it was more than that with Dean. He wanted to show Calvert that he’d sussed him out. I think he’d have pressured both the killer and Calvert for money.”
Harry shook his head. “He was playing a very dangerous game. Back to the names and faces, Thea. Where did they come from?”
“The names and locations are hidden in some sort of code Calvert and the killer use. Dean found a website in Calvert’s history. He told me the man was never off it.”
Suddenly Harry twigged. “The buying-and-selling site?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “He didn’t tell me how he’d figured it out, or how to decipher the code, but he’ll have made notes on his laptop. He got the names on those boards from the information he gathered. Any other information Dean needed about the victims he found in the press or social media.”
It made sense. This was the most promising lead they’d had yet, but they still needed to wait for Sasha to check out both the laptop and the mobile. “The entire operation was conducted using the website and some sort of code?” he asked.
She nodded. “Dean tried to get enough evidence to blackmail the killer with. He contacted the site and asked them to tell him who’d placed the ads. He wanted to nail them both. But the site is totally anonymous. Buyers and sellers have usernames and since he only ever places ads and never actually buys or sells anything, there’s no trail leading back to Calvert. All the information he used to register with was false — email, name and address, the lot.”
“Tell me again what happened when you met him, Thea.” Harry said.
“He called and we met in the shopping mall. He seemed perfectly ordinary, friendly even. The dog was cute. He said he’d spent the morning walking him, but that could be a lie. I realised later that the dog was a cover. He agreed to my demands and said he’d pay me to stay quiet. I was tempted, but when I thought about it later, he’d said exactly the same thing to Dean. I realised I’d made a huge mistake and that I had to get out. I knew too much, so he’d have to get rid of me.”
“What did you intend to use to blackmail the killer with, Thea?” Harry asked.
She looked at her father and then at Harry. “Just the stuff I know, about him and Calvert. And I’m sorry about that man. I never meant for him to die. I should have come to you sooner, stopped it.”
“What d’you mean? How could you have done that?” Harry asked.
“Me and Dean knew Roebuck’s name and where he lived. The details about the victims on the site include a date, and Roebuck’s do too, so I knew when it would happen.”
Harry struggled to hide how angry her words made him. This girl had known Roebuck would be killed and had let it happen to suit her own ends. He wanted to tell Thea Connor exactly what he thought of her but he held back. If he spoke his mind the girl might clam up, and they’d not finished with her yet. He’d submit a report to the CPS and leave it to them. “What did you do?”
“Dean had some spy cameras, they look like air fresheners. I set them up in the flat, and then I went back to collect them after he was dead.”
Harry recalled the third set of footprints in Roebuck’s blood. They had to be Thea’s.
“But the plan didn’t work,” she said. “The SD discs had been removed. The killer knocked one over and found them.”
“You deliberately let that man die, Thea,” Harry said.
“Will I be punished? Go to jail?”
Harry didn’t want to get into that one. He saw the worried look on her father’s face. He knew the law and the ramifications of what she’d done. “That’s not for me to say.” Thea was crying again, and he decided she’d had enough. “Thanks, Thea, you’ve given us some very helpful information, but we’ll finish for today. You look tired. We’ll put you and your dad somewhere safe, well away from Ryebridge, so you can rest.”
Rob Connor jumped to his feet. “I can’t just walk away from the office. Surely no one’s going to come after me?”
“We can’t be certain of that,” Harry said. “Once the killer realises that Thea’s disappeared, he might come after you, p
ile the pressure on so you tell him where she is.” Harry paused, watching Thea’s expression. She looked alarmed. “I also think Thea might appreciate having you with her. She’s scared and needs her dad. I intend to place you both in a safe house where there’s no possibility of the killer finding you.”
“I’m still concerned about my work,” Rob Connor said. “I’m up to my ears in cases that need my attention.”
“Can’t be helped. Get your admin assistant to lock up and go home, but don’t tell them why. Make sure they know not to return until you say so.”
“Can I get some stuff from the house?”
“No. You mustn’t go back there. You’ll leave directly from here. We’ll send someone to get what you need.” He paused for a moment — the girl had met the killer and that could be useful. “Before we finish, if I arrange it now, do you think you’d be able to help us create a photofit of the killer, Thea?”
“Yes. His face is imprinted on my brain.” She shivered. “And there’s something else. He didn’t want to get caught on CCTV because he said the police would know him.”
“When we get a good photofit, we’ll see who recognises him. I’ll sort that out and be back shortly.” Harry looked at Thea. “You’ve done well. Later, we’ll take you to the safe house and you can relax a bit. We’ll speak again tomorrow when I’ve got more information from the laptop you gave me.”
* * *
Harry returned to the main office to arrange a safe house for Thea and her dad. After a word with Rodders, it was agreed they would use a cottage on the outskirts of Stockfield, about ten miles from Ryebridge. It was up in the hills, out of the way but close enough for when Harry needed a word.
“Who’ll you appoint as FLO?” Jess asked.
“This is so important that I hoped that you might take it on, Jessie.” He saw the look. She wasn’t impressed.
“But I should be working the case with you,” she said. “We’re close now, we need all of us on it.”
“Thea’s been so candid because she’s terrified, but there’s more to come. She knew Roebuck was about to be murdered, yet she did nothing. She stood by and allowed him to die just to suit her own ends. There’s a side to that young woman I don’t much like. She’s utterly selfish and I don’t trust her one bit. I’d like you with her in case she decides to make a run for it. And if and when she wants to talk again, you’ll be there, on hand. You know what’s important to us and what to disregard. Some other FLO wouldn’t have a clue.”
THE FACELESS MAN an absolutely gripping crime mystery with a massive twist (Detectives Lennox & Wilde Thrillers Book 2) Page 14